his partners this week as saying that Mr. Gore would go younger, not leftier—and now, if his plans work, The Observer has learned, Mr. Gore’s news channel could be … VTV. Posted on 10/15/2003 7:15:09 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
As former Vice President Al Gore edges toward mini-media-moguldom, press sources quoted his partners this week as saying that Mr. Gore would go younger, not leftier—and now, if his plans work, The Observer has learned, Mr. Gore’s news channel could be … VTV.
V for victory, V for Vice President, V for Vermont, which Mr. Gore won by 30,000 votes in 2000.
In April, Mr. Gore’s principle business partner, Joel Hyatt, purchased a Web site called V.tv from The .tv Corporation, which supplies .tv domain extensions to customers like TBS, the Lifetime Channel and PAX. The company’s Web site lists Mr. Hyatt as V.tv’s administrative contact and as a representative of INDTV, L.L.C., located in Stanford, Calif., where Mr. Hyatt teaches business at Stanford University. An industry source confirmed that INDTV is the working incorporated name of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt’s TV project, which has been characterized in press reports as either a news network for the reality-TV generation or a liberal answer to Fox News, or both.
As of this writing, V.tv has not yet been activated.
According to the .tv Web site, the price of a fancy one-character domain name is $10,000. Mr. Hyatt didn’t return calls seeking comment, so it’s hard to know what the V in VTV stands for. One can only visualize Winston Churchill—or John Lennon—holding up two fingers.
If VTV sounds like that other three-lettered channel so beloved by the Oxy Cream generation, that’s no coincidence. Mr. Gore’s channel will reportedly be geared toward the young Democrats of tomorrow, who can relate to Mr. Gore’s fixation with the Internet and hand-held digital-video cameras (V for va-va-video!). Mr. Gore was a fan of MTV’s late-90’s video-diary show, Unfiltered, and met with the show’s producer earlier this year to talk about similar programming concepts.
With that in mind, The Observer called up a few members of the potential consumers in VTV’s future target audience to see if they’d ever flip to a channel that aired "edgy" 24-hour news about, say, Iraq and file-sharing and those bad, bad Fox News commentators.
"Yeah, I’d be interested," said Jimmy Jung, a 23-year-old advertising assistant. "I’d be curious. I don’t know if I’d check it out all the time, but probably."
Mr. Jung assumed that, if Mr. Gore was involved, it would be "liberal-slanted media." In fact, Mr. Gore’s name had to be considered, even if the respondents were fond of the idea.
"I’d be hesitant, because it’s being operated by former Vice President Al Gore," said Sarah Lewitinn, a 23-year-old assistant editor at Spin magazine whose friends call her "Ultragrrrl." "But at the same time, it’s cool that he’s trying to bring current affairs to the young. I think people get their information from MTV anyway, so here’s a network for them, which is kind of smart. I know a lot of people in my age group are really unaware of what’s going on in the world. They know more about the new Strokes album than what is going on in Iran and Iraq and Syria."
She said it would have to be something with a sense of humor, like The Daily Show, to work. But Elliot Aronow, 23, a public-relations assistant, said it needed to have some gravity. "It depends how seriously they took themselves and how much they gave young people an opportunity to report what they see," he said. "I think young people need to be informed, but not pandered to with all sorts of jump-cut, MTV-style editing. On the other hand, I do believe that most conventional news is totally disconnected from most young people."
Karen Ruttner, a 22-year-old intern at a music-booking agency, gave The Observer the bottom line: "The truth is, when it comes to important news, I don’t really care what people my age think. I’d rather hear the professional opinions of, like, seasoned news vets—people who know history and can really be comforting."
Josh Rosenblatt, 20, a student, said he had actually worked on Mr. Gore’s Presidential campaign in the former Vice President’s home state of Tennessee in 2000—and even he wasn’t too sure about Mr. Gore’s new thing.
"I like him as a person and as a candidate, but I don’t know how much I trust him with TV," he said. "I just think, for the average 18-to-21-year-old or whatever they’re aiming for, you can’t fool them into liking politics. At the end of the day, they have to compete with The Daily Show."
But what do the seasoned professionals think of it?
"I think there’s a market for it, but a small market," said Jim Murphy, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "How are they going to engage people? Personality? Smarts? You can do it by being hip, but news is not a hip thing. College-age kids and kids in their 20’s are interested in what’s going on, but it doesn’t mean they want to consume news. Can you make them feel young, smart and hip by watching this? Sure. But can you do that with homegrown documentaries? No."
For now, Mr. Gore and his partners are still negotiating the $70 million acquisition of digital-cable network Newsworld International from Vivendi Universal after French-owned Vivendi agreed to merge the rest of its entertainment assets with NBC.
Another unresolved question: Will VTV air reruns of V, the 1980’s sci-fi series about rodent-eating aliens who take over the earth? They should! That is, if their deal with Universal isn’t Vaporized.
For now, the only place on the tube where you can see the Gore-like Vulcans is on Star Trek: Enterprise.
I think it is the same Joel Hiatt who was a candidate for Senator from Ohio AND was also the lawyer who fired the AIDS guy from his law firm as depicted in the movie Philadelphia.
V = Vole
Grow up!!
So you're saying he's not all bad?
U is for Una who slipped down a drain V is for Victor squashed under a train
"I think the 'V' should stand for 'Venereal'!''
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